Chapter Text
“60”
And thus the countdown begins.
“59”
Ada takes in her surroundings. The tributes do not circle a cornucopia. In fact they do not circle at all. In a line they face a great entrance through a stone archway tall enough to dwarf a full building.
“53”
Behind her is a seemingly endless plain of smooth metal. She decides to aim for the arch. An arch must lead to something, she’ll need cover. It appears to have two corridors splitting off from the entrance leading to somewhere unseen.
Her fellow tribute from District 7 stands five platforms down from her. He had hardly given her a sideways glance since the reaping. Back home they had known each other enough to be recognised but not enough to even know each other’s names until the reaping.
Ada had decided already that she will run and not look back for him.
“38”
She’s dressed in a faded green shirt and ill-fitting trousers without a belt. All the tributes are dressed this way, in secondhand clothes with no thought to proper measurements. There’s an un-patched hole in the knee of her trousers.
Ada stares down at that hole as her head fills with rapid breaths and her fingers with shakes.
“25”
She hears someone throw up nearby. She can smell it.
She stares down at the hole in her trousers.
If she keeps looking at it then nothing will happen to her. That’s all she can think of.
If she keeps looking at the hole nothing will happen. Nothing will happen.
“7”
She has to look up.
“5”
Look up.
“4”
Look. Up.
“3”
Do not die on this platform.
“2”
She clenches her teeth painfully together and bends her knees.
“1”
Her eyes snap up to the archway.
The horn sounds.
Ahead the little girl with strange silver hair darts with surprising speed through the arch and is the first out of sight.
Ada runs. Her baggy trousers fall down and trip her up. Her palms take the fall and her skin shreds on impact. She’s crying and pulling at her trousers but the hulking boy from district 2 is raising his boot above her head and suddenly she knows she can only look up.
She can only look up. There is pain splintering her head like nothing that could exist.
She can only look up.
The first cannon fires.